Takeema Hoffman is an artist, educator, student, community servant and, above all things, a person in progress. She was born and raised in Fayetteville, NC and received her BA in Liberal Studies from Shaw University, the oldest HBCU in the south. In 2010 she relocated to Oakland which led her to the Visual and Critical Studies Program at CCA. Her academic practice is rooted in a deep love for the arts as well as a need to dissect and reform her understanding of what it is to be Black woman, Black American, too Black, and not Black enough. In line with this, her thesis research explores how music videos influence the aesthetics, construction, and performance of racial identity. How her work manifests in the world is likely to change, but what won’t is her dedication to working in service of communities, individuals, and organizations seeking empowerment and liberation through creative expression and critical thought.

About Takeema Hoffman's Thesis Project

These Colors Only Exist in Your Dreams: Music Video, Hip Hop, and Racial Myth Making

Black and White. This is America in certain uncertain terms. How are myths about race shared and changed through time? Further, why do seemingly archaic racial ideals seem to persist? This presentation seeks to understand racial myth-making in contemporary America through an exploration of a potent yet underestimated teaching tool: the music video. I am interested in how the unique form of the music video allows it to be a significant agent in the perpetuation, dissemination, and transformation of the racial mythology that informs current racial ideology. This talk investigates the ways music video acts as sensuous ethnographic spectacle and display through an intertextual reading of 90's rap videos, like Dr. Dre's "Nuthin' But A G Thang,” and their contemporary invocation. Through doing so, I hope to elucidate not only what music videos have told us about the nature of blackness and whiteness but how they've told us, and why it's been so hard for us not to listen.